Wildlife Documentaries Infringe Animal Privacy

[unixronin]

Via rosencrantz23:

"Wildlife documentaries infringe animals' privacy, says report."

Save the animals!  Save the animals!  (Just as long as you don't try to understand anything about how they live, or interest anyone in saving them, or do anything else that might actually help save them.  Because that might infringe their privacy.)

In related news, the IUCN Red List currently lists 3566 critically endangered species — 1859 in the animal kingdom, 1701 plants, four protists, and two fungal species.  The identify of the threatened species is being withheld lest well-meaning environmentalists should seek to infringe their privacy by mounting conservation efforts on their behalf.

...Well, OK, no.  I made up the part about withholding their identities.  (But you knew that, right?  Please tell me you knew that.)  But not the 3566 critically endangered species, or the report.  You can't save a species that nobody cares about, and to get people to care about something, you need to get them interested in it.

The BBC's Natural History unit in Bristol said:  "Constantly developing filming technology gives wildlife film-makers the ability to film animal behaviour with minimal disruption to the animal.  Film-makers work very closely with scientists whose work studying the complexity of animal lives is vital for wildlife conservation.

"Natural history films play a major role in spreading knowledge of their work.  And understanding the world around is vital in the continuing endeavour to preserve our ecosystem."

Exactly.  But god forbid reason and sense should interfere with some nitwit going on a hare-brained crusade.

Comments

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

"We have an assumption that humans have some right to privacy, so why do we not assume that for other species, particularly when they are engaging in behaviour that suggests they don't want to be seen?"

Because STFU...

Anything else is just encouraging these morons.

'according to Brett Mills, a lecturer in film studies at the University of East Anglia.'

Been a pretty brutal year for those folks in the field 'not looking like idiots'.